Durethia

I have PLENTY of complaints about BnS, NCSoft etc. But, you asked for positives. The main reason I started playing BnS, is because it is one of few MMORPGs that could be played casually. I could jump on and hit f8, and do a "raid" within a few minutes; this is because the daily raids are small, and fast. There are a number of small, relatively fast tasks to do in BnS; they even have events where you can enter an area, then hit F4 and auto kill mobs for goodies. That's great for casual playing where you can semi-afk. Another thing that's a positive, it doesn't take a long time to find players entering the daily dungeons. Well, the medium to upper range dungeons. If you're trying to search for people for the lower-end dungeons like Mines, or Hollow, you might be waiting for a while. Even playing Call of Duty, it takes a long time to find a group to play with, even in co-op. So, this is definitely a plus; BnS efficiently connects players with one another for cooperative play. Even though I would venture to guess there are more people playing CoD than BnS. Long wait times while games form groups is common for all sorts of games. BnS has something here, for sure.

The bug I mentioned, certainly seems like a bug. I'm well aware of a universal cool down between the SF and SB. I talked about this in my complaint, I believe they should stack, give distinct buffs, and they shouldn't share a cool down. I'm also well aware if another warlock is my group. Without any cool down, without a warden or an additional warlock in my group, about 30% of the time when I go to start Soulburn, the cool down activates but the buff doesn't.

Soulflare, Soulburn, they are just labels, when one negatively impacts the other. If a Warden throws a Soulflare, and prevents me from initiating Soulburn... as far as I'm concerned, he has a Soulburn-ish skill that competes with mine. Originally, the Warlock was under pressure to hit Soulburn and keep it up, but in the beginning it was rather difficult to initiate. Originally you had to deploy your thrall, which takes a bit of time to summon, and then you had to hit another skill to sacrifice your thrall... which that took a while... and then finally everyone has Soulburn. It was common to be interrupted, as the warlock is impacted by every CC thrown it's way by the bosses in PVE. (A lot of yelling at Warlocks to get SB up during those days.) Now a days, Soulburn is a little easier to initiate, the Warlock is required to block, and then hit Soulburn. But there's a bug, 20-30% of the time, the Soulburn doesn't actually activate but the cool-down is kicked off; it's mildly infuriating. I have thought about making a macro for Soulburn, maybe that will help, but if done manually this bug is real. The Soulburn should be very easy to kick off, and I would suggest cool down buffs so the Warlock can hit it more often... but ultimately, I feel Soulflare and Soulburn should have distinct, non-competing buffs and they should stack and not share a cool down. Frankly, I don't care what NCSoft does, as long as they make the WL competitive in support and competitive in DPS.

I started playing this game as a warlock, all of my nice gear is on my warlock, my main is a warlock, and it's what I rolled. The issues I have are the following: 1) I don't know why NCSoft saw fit to give other classes the Soul Burn. It's the only reason anyone ever wanted a Warlock in their group. Furthermore, they gave it to a class that commonly initiates engagement (Warden), and it feels as if the Warden's ability to initiate it is quicker than for the Warlock; like one key hit and boom it's on. While the Warlock can attain Black Wing, and with some soul shields have additional boosts to his Soul Burn... you can not explain this to some cocky Warden in your group; their Soul Burn is part of their rotation, and it doesn't matter that their boosts aren't as good as yours. I just went through this trying to explain to a lowbie Warden that my Soul Burn was more powerful, he just claimed I was jealous. He didn't even have Black Wing; none of his badges were legendary, his soul shields were crap. 2) DPS is dismal, absolute garbage. Even with a bad rotation, crappy skill rotation even, it shouldn't be as horrible as it is. Even doing spiders in the moon refuge, it feels like breathing through a straw. You can perceive how fast you're burning down the monsters, and everyone else accelerates far faster than I do. ANY other person hitting the same spider, I can tell they are out dps'ing me by a lot; my contributions are negligible. This follows in raids and in dungeons. The most DPS I have ever achieved is a couple thousand over 1million per second. Mostly, I just average around 300-500k per second. Again, I perhaps could try to work on my rotation, as this is always the excuse in all games about people complaining about their DPS. However, even in top tier dungeons everyone knows, Warlocks have nothing to contribute, so if the nerds and spreadsheet crunchers are coming to similar conclusions... something is definitely wrong. There seems to be a general agreement, from subreddits on Reddit, to Youtube videos, forums and faction chat in-game... any other class can have half the gear of the Warlock and easily out DPS him without requiring a difficult and tuned skill rotation scheme. NCSoft this is ridiculous. No one should have SB but the Warlock. And you have to do something about the DPS. I'm convinced, if you straight up doubled the DPS stats for all skills, the class would still lag behind in DPS. It's ridiculous. I have no choice to stick with the Warlock, I'm too vested at this point. I have another character, but I just use him to store some Hongmoon stones and stuff. The class is so gimped, I don't really feel I contribute much to any group. I'm HM 19 close to HM 20, I believe I'm decently geared, and I have to say, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of HM 15s out there that can out DPS my character. I'm not left with much incentive to continue playing, other than very personal objectives of finishing dailies. This isn't good for your player base.